Abstract

Living the sequel
Characterizing recent Irish history has come to involve a new temporal
orthodoxy of pre- and post- 1990s Ireland. Like the testaments of the
Bible, it is divided into old and new, and many may argue that the comparison
does not end there (although the promised land has been relocated to
part two). Bonanza development and globalization, the swift celebration
of consumer society, and experiencing what Zygmunt Bauman caustically
calls the 'two-sided coin of mobility' has generated a vocal and complex
consideration of Irish identities. In countless ways, the daily experience of
social life and interaction produces negotiations and versions of what it is
to be oneself, presumably including disparate and overlapping understandings
of Irishness. Yet in general public discourse, a fixation with received
and assumed notions of culture and multiculturalism has privileged concepts
that involve exclusion as a condition of their discourse. In common
with many European countries, Irish conceptualizations and experiences
of change have been accompanied by 'an anxiety about cultural change and
cultural power', even if the issue of power is barely articulated. This article
contends that rather than passively adopting the obscuring parameters of
culture and multiculturalism and grappling with issues thus (de)formed,
considering Ireland's changes and futures necessitates developing and
calibrating concepts capable of articulating what is actually invested in
these debates. As they are now commonly deployed, culture and multiculturalism
configure change as an end state, and lack the fluidity to
encompass adaptations, hybridities and multiple allegiances